Stories from the Inside
by SabineLaGrande
Summary: A series of vignettes of the Black family from Andromeda Black Tonks's point of view. Finished.
1. Prelude

"Bella," a high, cold voice said, "you must choose." His voice was like a snake slithering across satin. I could almost hear her thinking.  
  
"But what about Narcissa?" she stammered.  
  
"Narcissa will be very valuable to me, once she marries Lucius," he all but hissed.  
  
"And Andromeda?" she asked, her voice uncertain. I could hear him move, presumably closer to her.  
  
"That one-" from his mouth, it was like a curse- "will spend her life listening at keyholes to things she does not understand." In my mind's eye, I can see her mouth open and close wordlessly. She's deciding in that moment whether to sell me out.  
  
"You're right, of course," she said finally. "She just isn't one of us."  
  
Maybe he was right. They locked me out of their world when I was very young, all because I didn't care about their stupid prejudices or their arcane bloodlines. I just wanted to be me. But for all they tried, they couldn't expunge me completely. They cannot take what I have seen; I cannot make myself forget how I knew them. I will always be tied to them, no matter how much all of us hate it. 


	2. Lemon Juice

Narcissa always smelled like lemon juice.  
  
Not lemons. Never like lemons. Like the lemon juice that comes in a bottle that really doesn't taste like lemons at all. It tastes like tart and sharp and acid. Lemons are good and wholesome. Lemon juice seems a little sickly. It's always dim and clouded. It reminds me distinctly of spit.  
  
It didn't come to me for a long time; I don't know why. Narcissa was forever going through bottles of the stuff. She'd pour it on her hair in the summer before she'd go out to play with Bella and me. I suppose she never could be blonde enough to suit herself, or rather, to suit Lucius. She put it in everything she drank, too. Narci liked to pretend it was because she was "cultivating the voice." I always thought she sounded exactly like a scalded cat. The real reason was that it kept her thin; it kept all her water weight off. The lemon juice, I guess, made her just what she wanted to be: emaciated and beautiful, hardly real at all.  
  
I didn't realize it until the last time I saw her, which always struck me as funny. How did I spend 18 years with her and never notice? Sirius and I had just graduated. I had cut off my long hair of which Mother was so fond, started wearing lots of black leather, and bought a motorbike. I think Sirius got it eventually. Mother and I had had a fight. I was profaning the family honor or something like that. According to her, I was always profaning the family honor. I was in my room, packing to run off with Ted. It's a special art, packing. The trick is getting the socks to fold just right. The rest just follows. So I was doing my little packing trick, cursing my mother and the whole damn Black family to every ill fate that popped into my head.  
  
She flounced in, having just come in from sitting out with that stuff in her hair. She didn't say a word to me, just turned up her prim little nose, glared, and pranced out. That was when it hit me. Narcissa had become lemon juice. Dim. Artificial. Tart. She was nothing but a pretty face and an odor of that bloody lemon juice that I hated so much.  
  
I laughed all the way out of the house that day, laughed all the way out of that stuffy pureblood world. Sometimes I feel sorry for her. She used to be so lovely, back when she was real. I wonder if Narci's still caught in the web, if she still reeks of artifice.  
  
Somehow, I think it would surprise me if she didn't. 


	3. Shadow of the Vampire

They used to say that the Blacks came down from the vampires. I never knew whether it was true or not. Mother said we could be traced all the way back to Elizabeth Bathory, but she was always saying things like that. She'd claim kinship to any pureblood she took a liking to. I heard it more often at school, whispers in corridors that would evaporate as soon as I turned.  
  
You could still see it in Bella though. She had that certain otherworldly quality. It used to scare me sometimes, especially when I'd round a corner in the manor and come upon her unexpectedly. She'd be standing there, paler than the moon itself, almost seeming poised to strike. Maybe that's why I could never trust her. I could never tell what she was up to.  
  
Bellatrix is the world's best manipulator. She always has been. Even when we were children, she had the biggest room, the newest toys, and the best tutors. The worst was how she could handle Father. Bella could flutter an eyelid in just the right way and make him forget his own name.  
  
She was very popular with men before she met Rodolphus. Slytherin House was filled with her conquests. Bella'd pick them out, charm them, seduce them, then toy with them. She could drop a casual word from her perfect lips and make a man feel completely degraded. She never shone as brightly as when she had some poor fool on a string. Oh, they'd eventually leave her, once the proverbial scales fell from their eyes. But every last one of them would be back by her side in a heartbeat.  
  
It's no wonder why He wanted her so badly. She's his perfect accessory- beautiful, remorseless, and willing to suck the life from anyone. 


	4. Like A Movie

I've made my peace with it now. I loved him, I really did. He was closer than a brother to me. He was all I had inside of that cold world. There's nothing left there for me now.  
  
I miss his smile, mostly. It was the most infectious thing I've ever seen. He could flash that smile, and everything else would just fade. Everything was fine if Sirius was around.  
  
I never believed it. I know everybody says that. Everyone's a genius after the fact. I really knew it though. He wasn't like them. Rius hated the darkness. I wanted to go to the trial. I wanted to stand up and scream at them and break things and save him. But what do you say? How do you tell people who've lost their friends, their children, their parents that they're wrong? How do you stop people who are out for vengeance?  
  
I'll admit it now; I was afraid when he escaped, afraid for my life. Does an innocent man run? I thought I had been wrong for all those years. I thought he was going to come after me. After all, he betrayed his best friends to their death. He left his own godson an orphan. A year I lived in complete fear of him, of my Rius, of my own cousin.  
  
Then Nymphadora came to me one day. She'd finally finished her Auror training, bless her. She told me all about the Order, rather against her instructions, and she told me she had seen him. I couldn't believe it, or, rather, I didn't want it to be true. She said I had one day to visit my Aunt's old house before the new wards went up.  
  
I went. No more thought, no more hesitation. Perhaps it was a bit self destructive of me, running to meet a convicted murderer. But I didn't care anymore. I had to know.  
  
My fear caught me on the stairs to the room where he was waiting, just after that wretched portrait stopped screaming at me. Trembling, I felt my fingers reach out and open the door.  
  
I'd like to say it was all like a muggle movie. I'd love to say that I saw his face, and I believed, and we ran to one another, and it was beautiful. Really, I would. But it didn't happen like that. There were a lot of tears and a lot of screaming before I settled down. I found myself finally sitting on the bed, wrapped in his strong arms. Sirius and I stayed like that for a long, long time, talking until far past the sunrise.  
  
And then, too fast, he was gone. Killed because Bella still couldn't bear to see him happy without her influence, killed because he cared enough about his godson to try and save him.  
  
Somehow, it wasn't like losing him the first time. Sirius would have been approved of the way he died. I think it would have almost excited him. He would have been furious about what came after though. I don't know how many times I've had to hear him lauded by people who would have cursed him before. It makes me want to tear my hair out. Rius wasn't a hero. They didn't even know him; they just know it's popular to like him now. It's so against everything he was. It makes me sick. 


	5. An Old Story

I can still feel Rastaban. I can still taste Rastaban. The very mention of his name brings up bile into my throat.  
  
His hair was long, black, fine, and exquisite to touch. It was always in a ponytail that started just at the base of his neck. I was young, too young, but you know how hindsight is. Rodolphus and Bella had already started an intense, slow burn courtship. It just seemed like the right thing. You know how it starts, for it always starts the same. Innocent girl desperate to fit in, older boy looking for someone to look up to him. They talk. They flirt. He ignores her, she dotes more. All very much on the level, all evenhanded, all typical.  
  
I think I liked him because he smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. At least, I think that was my reason to myself at the time. Even Muggle tobacco was too tainted for him; he found the one wizard grower in the world. At the time, I thought it made him sophisticated rather than pretentious and elitist.  
  
He looked at me one day, taking a long drag from one of those self-same cigarettes. He looked at me, appraised me, gave me that long, hard gaze that is the ultimate test. I don't really know what he saw. I was a rather confused 6th year, torn between family and future, who hadn't quite realized that she had developed quickly and favorably. He finished his painfully slow, yet almost offhand glance and looked me right in the face.  
  
"So I suppose you want to go out?" he said, as one would address an uncooperative child. So much for my first sweet taste of young love. It didn't matter to me then. I still thought he was the be all and end all of the wizarding world.  
  
Dating didn't make things that much different. Furtive groping in the astronomy tower, a constant escort to class, living as a perpetual performance piece for all of Slytherin, a much envied invitation to the Graduation Dance. It was every cliché imaginable, but I though it was something rare and beautiful. I was an exceedingly young, exceedingly stupid girl.  
  
It was late summer, just before I got my letter for seventh year. I was staying at Lestrange Manor. Strange as it sounds, I wanted to be home. It was one of the rare moments that my mother and I actually got along. Outside, the sky was spending itself on the land. We were lying on his bed, in his room all immaculate in dark brocade and mahogany paneling. It was the kind of room that seems almost too good to be in, where every trace of someone living there is carefully removed each day by the house elf.  
  
How can I describe what happened? I don't suppose I really need to. You know this story. A lot more fumbling than I expected, surprisingly less pain, one maidenhead sealed and delivered, one moment I'd love to forget.  
  
Yet the world did not stop there, as I have often hoped that it would. Of course, we broke up. You cannot really look someone in the eye whom you do not love after you've debased yourself in front of them. Besides, I was still a schoolgirl. He went directly into Voldemort's service. I went directly into Ted's arms and directly out of that life. The little peace was dissolved. End of story. Only we had to go on living.  
  
As one is almost required to in these situations, I hate him with every fiber of my being. How could I not? I gave him willingly what was, at least to him, the very essence of my being. Then we betrayed each other absolutely. The hands I held torture people. The lips I kissed spit curses. I used to think about it often. Too often. It was like a bruise that I cannot keep from touching. I have cursed him and cried and vomited and crawled like an animal and moved on and never really left that time. And I did it all willingly. I danced happily to the slaughter. 


	6. The Price of Dissent

Regulus wasn't stupid, soft maybe, but not stupid. He was one of the smartest people I've ever known.  
  
On an intellectual level, he agreed with You-Know-Who. We all did at first. Regulus was the sort of great mind that can believe in terribly lofty ideals, even if they could easily lead to the deaths of thousands of people. And so He sold it to Reggie- just a set of ideas and a tattoo. Regulus had no splendid indoctrination ceremony like the rest of them. It didn't appeal to him, and so He didn't order it.  
  
I had the dubious honor of being there the first time his Mark burned. Nothing at first- a little tingle, a slight itch- but it grew. I had to watch him writhing in agony, rolling on the ground and trying to tear the flesh from his arm. He finally apparated to Him, more to find out about his botched tattoo than obeying orders.  
  
Regulus didn't return.  
  
Thus began the terrible speculation of What Happened To Regulus. Some say the Dark Lord simply and quickly killed him. It was the height of His power, and he would brook no dissent. But that is too simple for Him. The vast list of the tortures that He is willing to inflect has no end.  
  
I wasn't there when my cousin's body appeared on the kitchen floor at Grimmauld Place. I didn't see Sirius carry him to his parents. I refused to be told what had happened to him.  
  
That's all she wrote. Regulus made his one great mistake, and it cost him everything.  
  
It terrifies me that it can be that simple. 


	7. Born at the Right Time

Lucky Lucius. He hated when we called him that; so, of course, we made sure to use it as much as possible.  
  
But it was the only name that every really fit him. Lucius never wanted for anything in his life. When a new broom came out, he had it. As soon as he finished a book, he had another. When he tired of a robe, he got a new one. When his owl bit him, his parents got him another. If his girlfriend looked at another boy, some other girl would take her place.  
  
And he loved it. Anything new made him instantly happy. Let's face it- there were a lot of us who were just as spoiled as Lucius. But nobody was as happy as him.  
  
I can remember when he took the Mark. He was a seventh year then and Head Boy. Narcissa and he were dating. Lucius paraded his arm around the common room, because, of course, he was the first. It was brand new. We all thought it was amazing. And he lapped it up.  
  
He must be the only person ever born that was completely content with his life. Everything suited him. He really believed in everything that You-Know- Who said. He loved all that purity talk. There was no more perfect fate for him than to be born a Malfoy at that exact time.  
  
Then when it all crumbled, he stayed on top. He had a son, who was just like his father, minus the luck. His lord came back almost from the dead, with Lucius by his side. Everything was perfect for him.  
  
And then he got sent to Azkaban. And I laughed until I cried. 


	8. Monster

It's not often that you meet someone without a soul. You meet mean people, egotistical people, inconsiderate people every day. They still have hopes and fears. They might realize what they're doing is wrong. They feel guilt. Even Bellatrix has a conscience. She's crazy, but she can still feel.  
  
I've only met one person who was truly... how can I even express it? A monster. Inhuman. And that was Rodolphus. He was more like a machine than a human being.  
  
Rodolphus was always very popular with the other Slytherins. He was a Beater for the house team for the longest time, and everyone liked him. Everyone wanted an invitation to one of the parties he and Rastaban used to throw during summer. Very handsome, hated anyone who wasn't rich, all the normal things one expects out of a popular pureblood. Bella idolized him. How could she not? He was the first man who didn't cater to her every whim. She'd never had a challenge like him before, and so she loved him desperately.  
  
Everyone else loved him, but he scared the hell out of me. It had something to do with his eyes. They had this way of looking through you, right into the deepest part of your soul. He didn't even seem like a wizard. He seemed like he should be some fantastic creature, or a villain from a fairy tale, anything but just another person.  
  
He never felt remorse for anything he did. Once, he nearly killed a girl on the Hufflepuff quidditch team during a match. He sent two bludgers at her at once, then hit her over the head with his club when the second one missed. She fell off her broom, and she would have died if she hadn't been a witch and the school nurse hadn't been there. But no one in Slytherin even noticed, because we won. He got carried back to the common room on their shoulders, the man of the hour.  
  
I think he was part of the main reason that I left. It seems strange to think that- he isn't even really family, not blood. But I couldn't live in a world with people like him in it. More than that, I couldn't be a part of a society where a man like Rodolphus was feted instead of locked up. 


	9. Postlude

A/N: I'm not sorry to say that this is the last chapter. It's been fun, but I'm glad to be done with it. Thanks to everybody who's reviewed. I really do appreciate it. See you around.

-

But I don't really hate any of them anymore, except maybe Rodolphus. Hate is not as strong as love, no matter what anyone says. I drowned my hatred for them in my love for you and Ted. Silly, isn't it? I could have had anything I wanted, but I chose to be a blood traitor.  
  
When you were little, I tried to keep you away from it. I didn't tell you about my family, only about your muggle relatives. I still don't know if that was right or not, but what's done is done.  
  
I used to regret having left them, but then you were born. That was when I knew I'd done the right thing. You're not like them. You're rare and wonderful and beautiful, and I love you, Dora.  
  
I don't know how this is going to end. I don't know if my family will be praised or vilified for what they've done. But you have a right to know about their world, and about my part in it. You deserve to know who they really were, who I was. That's why I wrote this for you.


End file.
